


Patience, Less a Virtue Than a Blade

by Brigantine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Humor, M/M, POV Sheriff Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski Suspects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:44:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles's dad is willing to wait to get the answers he needs, but not indefinitely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patience, Less a Virtue Than a Blade

**Author's Note:**

> My love for Stiles's long-suffering dad is epic. No, seriously, my love for that poor man is huge.

Sheriff Mike Stilinski has got an eye for details and twenty years of experience to back it up. What all of that is telling him tonight – a quarter past midnight, by his watch – is that Janine and Chrissy Plummer’s rescue may have been more remarkable than Janine realizes. The driver’s side door of her car was removed in its entirety, taken off right at its hinges, which from the perspective of the Beacon Hills Fire Department was a happy convenience, but from Mike’s point of view the way the door was laid out on the hillside nearby seemed awfully tidy, and maybe that door was torn off during the roll down the hill, or maybe it wasn’t. 

Janine doesn’t remember much about the minutes immediately after the accident. Mostly, she tells Mike, there was the panic of realizing she’d hit black ice, couldn’t control the car, and then the sickening slide and tumble down the steep embankment. She banged her head pretty good on the steering wheel before the air bag engaged, and the next thing she knew she was peering up at Derek Hale as he loomed next to her, thigh deep in the dark, cold water of the ditch her little blue Honda had rolled into. 

"He called me 'Ma’am'," Janine says, looking bewildered. "We're the same age."

By the time Mike and the EMTs showed up Janine and Chrissy were wrapped together in an old blanket in the front seat of Stiles's Jeep with the heater running as high as it could go, while Derek stood in the middle of the road with a flashlight to flag down the emergency responders and Stiles, soaked to the waist and shivering, entertained Chrissy with his best ridiculous faces.

Melissa McCall enters the room from behind Mike, edging him aside with a gentle nudge of one hip. She comes bearing a cup of coffee for Janine and a butterfly bandage for the short gash on her forehead. It won't need stitches, but there's a nasty bruise already forming.

Melissa says, "Janine, I know you want to go home, but we like to keep an eye on head injuries, and with Andy away until Friday... Can your mother stay with you tonight?"

Janine nods and sips gratefully at the coffee. “He's like Mister Darcy,” she whispers to Melissa.

Melissa gently taps down the edges of the butterfly bandage and asks, “Who's that, sweetie?”

“Him,” Janine explains. ” _Derek Hale._ "

Melissa glances up at Mike and repeats thoughtfully, "Derek is like Mr. Darcy?"

"Sure," Janine says. "I see him around town, and he comes across so stern and self contained, all brooding blue eyes and black leather, but he lifted me out of my car as though I don't weigh anything, and he carried me up that hill like I was some heroine out of a Regency romance. It was... well, I was wet and freezing and my head hurt and I was kind of nauseated and terrified, but otherwise it was really pretty cool.”

"Yeah, that... sounds pretty cool." Melissa winces and shrugs at Mike, who manages to not laugh.

Janine nods toward her infant daughter, who sleeps dry and warm in her car carrier on the exam table next to her. "Chrissy likes him."

“Well,” Melissa agrees. “There you go.”

On the other side of the privacy curtain Bill Garza, the doctor on emergency room duty tonight, is trying to get Stiles to sit still so that he can finish stitching up a six-inch gash in Stiles's left forearm where he cut himself on broken glass getting Chrissy out of the back of the Honda. 

Stiles squawks, ”--a leech on me? Is that a leech? Oh my God, are there _leeches on the baby?_ ”

Janine giggles and nudges her shoulder into Melissa.

Derek growls, "Quit flailing, Stiles! It’s not a leech. The baby is fine."

"Did you _check her_ for leeches? Did anyone check--Oww!"

Bill sighs, "Mr. Stilinski..."

"'Mr. Stilinski?' It's like I'm eighty years old now. Mr. Stilinski. Are you sure that's not a--"

"Stiles, then. Please don't make me sedate you."

"You wouldn't do that! Would you?"

Derek threatens, "I will jab the needle into your ass myself if you don't quit squirming and let him finish."

"Okay first of all let me point out that you propose this radical course of action with far too much relish, and second, you are not licensed to administer medication. What are you doing? What nefarious plot are you hatching behind that moody glower?"

"I could be persuaded to look the other way," Bill offers. "How much caffeine have you had today Stiles?"

“Hey, space, personal space!” There’s a rustle of fabric, and the squeak of someone climbing onto the exam table.

“You are going to hold still now,” Derek declares.

"Stop that! You're not the boss of me! Oof!"

Bill snickers, "I had no idea my shift tonight would include improvisational theatre."

Mike sidles leftward so that he's got a better view of Stiles and Derek. Derek has settled behind Stiles on the exam table and wrapped his arms around Stiles’s waist so that Stiles is, for practical purposes, sitting in Derek's lap. They've both changed from their wet clothes into dry blue scrubs by now. Stiles is wearing pink hospital slippers, but Derek is barefoot, and his long toes curl over the arches of Stiles’s feet. Derek rests his chin on Stile’s left shoulder. Aside from Derek's extra muscle mass the two of them are nearly of a size, so the way they're sitting together should be awkward, yet they both appear remarkably... comfortable. Mike can feel his eyebrows rise. They're rising up there pretty high, truth be told.

Stiles fidgets and grimaces, “You are all terrible people.”

Derek squeezes him. “Be still.”

“Pushy,” Stiles gripes, but he obediently holds his arm steady on the little steel table so that Bill can finish sewing him up with neat, even stitches. Blood oozes sluggishly from Stiles’s arm.

Mike is reminded of a day when Stiles was eleven years old and broke three fingers of his right hand during a crash landing while skateboarding in the elementary school parking lot with Scott. Mike nearly had to sit on him to keep him from fiddling with all the shiny instruments and pressing the buttons on the machines, all the while asking rapid-fire questions of the staff. The questions weren’t a problem, but the button-pushing impulse really had to stop. Bill Garza was still a resident then. He probably remembers.

Derek looks up. His gaze meets Mike's and he starts, as though he’d forgotten Mike is here. He presses Stiles closer to himself protectively, a quick, reflexive gesture, and something red flashes from behind his eyes, and then it's gone. A sudden flood of adrenaline forces Mike to brace himself against the urge to reach for the .38 at his hip. Mike blinks, takes a long, slow breath and wonders what the hell just happened.

Stiles wheezes irritatedly, “Unf, breathing, here!”

“Sorry.” Derek ducks to press his forehead against the back of Stiles's head.

Mike can see him taking deep, slow breaths, as though shaken by the strange incident a moment ago as much as Mike was. 

Bill, smiling in quiet amusement and concentrating on his work, doesn’t appear to have noticed anything unusual, but Stiles frowns a little, and his right hand drifts upward to cover Derek's. He darts a glance at Mike, drops his hand back to his lap. The flicker of concern in his eyes is quickly hidden by a reassuring smile that's become all too familiar between them.

And that, Mike decides, is enough of that.

Mike watches Bill Garza tie off the final stitch in Stiles's arm and wipe the blood from Stiles's skin. He decides that he is not going to ask Stiles what he was doing driving out toward the Hale house at half past eleven on a school night with Derek Hale in his car. He won't try to persuade him to share a story that may not be entirely his to tell. 

It's time, Mike decides, probably long past time, that he and Derek Hale get to know one another better outside of Mike's cruiser and the booking section at the Sheriff's station. Derek reminds Mike of the puzzle boxes he used to mess around with when he was a boy. Getting one to open up couldn't be accomplished by brute force, not without ruining the box. Persuading a puzzle to give up its secrets was a matter of patience, required a certain finesse, and finally the ability to recognize the exact place to start applying real pressure. Mike always figured out how to open up the box, eventually. 

 

\--#--


End file.
